Tag: bank

Apple has banned Westpac bank’s mobile payments feature, which allowed customers to make payments through messaging apps including Snapchat, Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

While it’s confirmed that Apple has ordered Westpac to remove the mobile payments feature, it is yet to be confirmed what the exact reasoning is for this decision.

Westpac has confirmed with its customers that the recently-launched Keyboard feature would be removed from July, despite it already being installed by tens of thousands of customers. More than that, Westpac had previously addressed security concerns with Apple, regarding the payment feature, prior to its launch in March.

Additionally, the decision comes only months after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) denied an application by NAB, CBA and Westpac to collectively negotiate with Apple over access to Apple Pay and the NFC contactless payments features on iPhones. This means that the banks cannot offer their own digital wallets on the iPhone and so far ANZ is the only one of the four major banks to strike a deal with Apple to offer Apple Pay to customers.

The bank will still be offering its Keyboard feature to Android users in the coming months.

When it comes to PCI DSS compliance, most organizations consider it as a one-off task, something to complete – often only after the Acquiring Banks ask to do so – and forget about once the compliance has been validated. The problem is that compliance audits only prove best-practice during a snapshot in time, and most organizations fail to maintain best-practice after they have passed the audit. It has been found that most, if not all, organizations that were supposedly PCI DSS compliant were found to no longer be compliant at the moment they were compromised.

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has grown by 100 times in usage since the network was launched in April 2016.

Although transactions on BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money), the government-funded app, have decreased, use of private UPI-linked apps such as PhonePe and Chillr has surged. Banks and private institutions have taken the lead in demonetizing India’s economy through integration with the UPI network, reports The Economic Times.

Data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) shows that UPI transactions have increased to 9.2 million in May from 6.9 million in April 2017 and 92,000 in August 2016.

UPI transactions made through the BHIM app have dropped to 42% in May from 44% in April 2017, but it saw an increase to 46% in the value of the transactions. The app has been downloaded 20 million times since launch, but use has slowed down in recent months, mainly due to the expanding UPI network which links together 50 banks.

Another factor that slowed down BHIM use is the entrance of new competitors, such as Samsung Pay, on the market, who adopted the payments platform and integrated their services with it. Other companies like Android Pay and Stripe are also planning to launch their mobile payments services in India through the UPI network.

Fiserv has announced that several banks and credit unions will join Zelle, a P2P payments network from Early Warning.

Citizens Bank, Dollar Bank, First National Bank of Pennsylvania and SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union will join the P2P network through Turnkey Service provided by Fiserv. Previously announced clients include Ally Bank, Bank of the West and BECU.

The Zelle payments network allows customers to send funds from one bank to another using only a recipient’s email address of mobile number. The Turnkey solution by Fiserv centralizes all the P2P services into a single platform.

The Digital Person-to-Person Payments in the U.S.: The Competitive Landscape report by Aite Group shows that financial institutions held 83% of the digital P2P market share in 2016, while alternative payment providers had 17%. The report has also revealed that in 2015 cash and checks were the preferred method of American consumers for P2P payments, highlight that there is room for online payments expansion.

TransferWise, the UK-based payments money transfer company, is launching a new service allows customers to make cross-border payments in a wide range of currencies.

TransferWise has implemented a “borderless scheme” to improve the efficiency of sending money around the globe. The service will initially only be available for small businesses and freelancers in the UK and Europe, and will be available to those in the US next month.

This type of function will allow businesses who are challenged with moving money from one country to another an alternative to a normal bank transfer process or even PayPal. Normally global financial institutions such as Citibank and HSBC for example, offer such schemes to their customers.